Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a multi-carrier transmission technique that uses orthogonal subcarriers to transmit information within an available spectrum. Because the subcarriers may be orthogonal to one another, they may be spaced much more closely together within the available spectrum than, for example, the individual channels in a conventional frequency division multiplexing (FDM) system. To help achieve orthogonality, a subcarrier may have a null at the center frequency of the other subcarriers. Orthogonality of the subcarriers may help prevent inter-subcarrier interference within the system. Before transmission, the subcarriers may be modulated with a low-rate data stream. The transmitted symbol rate of OFDM symbols may be low, and thus the transmitted OFDM signal may be highly tolerant to multipath delay spread within the channel. For this reason, many modem digital communication systems are turning to OFDM as a modulation scheme for signals that need to survive in environments having multipath reflections and/or strong interference. Many wireless communication standards have already adopted OFDM including, for example, the IEEE 802.11a standard, the Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial (DVB-T) standard, and the High performance radio Local Area Network (HiperLAN) standard. In addition, several industry consortia, including the Broadband Wireless Internet Forum and the OFDM Forum, are proposing OFDM for fixed wireless access systems.
One problem with OFDM systems is that they may be more sensitive to phase noise and frequency variation relative to single carrier systems. Unlike single carrier systems, phase noise and frequency variation in OFDM systems introduce interference, including inter-carrier interference and inter-symbol interference. Some conventional OFDM systems use special training symbols and/or phase locked loops (PLLs) for estimating frequency offset and for tracking phase variations, however accurate frequency synchronization and phase compensation using these techniques is especially difficult because of the noise and channel effects, such as linear distortion in a multipath channel. Thus there is a general need fro systems and methods that provide frequency synchronization and phase tracking in an OFDM receiver system.